Farmhouse in Upper Austria

Painted in 1911 during a summer stay on the Attersee, this oil on canvas captures a rustic wooden farmhouse in Buchberg through a screen of fruit trees and wildflowers. Currently held in the Belvedere in Vienna, the work exemplifies Klimt’s unique adaptation of Pointillism, where he used small dabs of color not to dissolve forms—as the French Impressionists did—but to create a solid, mosaic-like structure. The composition is tightly cropped and intentionally flattened, a signature effect of Klimt’s use of a square cardboard viewfinder to frame his landscapes. The grey-violet facade of the house is partially obscured by the lush green foliage of the fruit trees, creating a "hermetically sealed" view that blocks out the horizon and sky completely. This lack of depth transforms the scene into a two-dimensional ornamental pattern, where the vibrant flower meadow in the foreground merges seamlessly with the trees and architecture.